I didn’t see Leto for over a week.
In a way, I wasn’t disappointed. He’d been acting weird lately and, well, if he was going to be a jerk to me, I saw no reason for him to hang around. When he wanted to start acting like the Leto I knew and loved, I’d welcome him back with open arms.
While Leto was missing in action, I busied myself with the onslaught of work that kept being thrown at me. In middle school, I felt the workload was unchallenging, mainly because it was practically nonexistent. Even during class, I had too much extra time on my hands. Now that I was in high school, however, everything took a sudden lurch forward. I had nights where I’d spend two, maybe even three, hours writing essays, taking notes, and working out Chemistry problems. It was a miracle when I only had an hour, though those days were exclusively due to the grace of a substitute teacher who didn’t assign us any work.
When I woke up one chilly October morning, half-exhausted from spending most of my night jotting down Chemistry formulas, I expected it to be another day of assignments after assignments. I already planned out how I’d break it all down and get it finished before midnight. However, to my surprise, most of our teachers were out for professional development. This meant that our fifty-minute periods, instead of being full of work, would be full of chatter and confused substitutes. I couldn’t decide which was worse.
In World History, at least, the chaos was a bit more subdued. Too many of us were behind on our work for us to be fooling around. Though I spent the first fifteen minutes revising the notes I’d written last night, I soon found myself without any work to do. Everything else had been done in the periods prior, and as I kept up on my homework, I wasn’t behind. Once again, I was left with a large amount of free time. Seeing as I was far too exhausted to read, and it was too loud in there to get any sleep, I simply stared down at the pencil between my fingers, counting the wood strokes on each side. However, even that soon became boring, and my mind began to drift into silence.
“Hey…Hey, Smartypants!”
“Huh–?”
Knocking myself out of whatever trance I’d fallen into, I glanced up to the sight of Almanzo coming over to sit next to me, his two cronies in tow. I hadn’t ever spoken to Julian and Matthew other than for a few words exchanged at our lunch table. I spent most of my lunch time chatting with Birdie and her friend (Once again, I forgot her name), while the three boys usually rough-housed and made fun of each other.
“Hey, do you understand any of this?” Almanzo slapped the paper we’d been given a week ago down on the desk, having only a few half-hearted scribbles written on it. “I know it’s supposed to be something about the Mongols, but I’m not sure what any of this means.”
Matthew and Julian sat down in front of us, the former shaking his head. “I’ve explained it to him a thousand times, but he won’t listen to me.”
Taking his paper in my hands, I began to go over the topic at hand. I hate to make Almanzo out to be a stereotypical dumb jock, but to be fair, that’s exactly what he was. The whole assignment was based on notes we’d done in class with the teacher three weeks ago, and all the answers could be found there. Turns out, the reason why he was so confused was that he’d lost the paper a day after he got it. I lent him mine and, within ten minutes, he had it finished. The probability of him actually being right, however, even with an open source, was quite low. I offered to check them for him, though he was confident and turned it into the missing work tray with a puffed-out chest. How such a cocky, idiotic boy could ever be related to the ravishing, genius of a girl that was Birdie, I’d never know.
He plopped himself down back in his seat with a puff, leaning one arm over onto my desk. I could see the hairs on his arm, making him look full-on manly alongside the muscles that bulged under his skin. Leaning close, he smirked softly and began to twirl his ginger hair with feigned innocence.
“Sooooo, heard about the homecoming dance this year?” He spoke smugly, as though he knew something I didn’t.
“The homecoming dance?” I had, in fact, heard it was happening. I didn’t know much about dances or how they worked, so I hadn’t given it much thought. “What about it?”
“Are you going?”
“Ehh, probably not.” I fiddled with the pencil on my desk, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t have anyone to go with.”
“Why don’t you take my sister?”
